Blame Shifts After Minneapolis Shooting, Claims Disputed (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The blame game inside the Trump administration, while the president says things in Minneapolis are going to, quote, deescalate a bit. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, the president's powerful advisor, are taking heat over the deadly shooting of Alex Pretty and their statements after it. Miller described Pretty as a would-be assassin. Noem described him as a domestic terrorist. The videos clearly refuted those claims. And now Noem is facing growing bipartisan calls to resign. And Miller, in a rare retreat, is acknowledging agents may have breached protocol, protocol that he set or the White House set before the shooting. With us now, CNN's Betsy Klein and Jeff Zeleny. And first, I just want to hold up a flow chart, friend, of my understanding of the blame game here. There you can see, you know, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is blaming Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller seems to be blaming Customs and Border Protection. Betsy, you're at the White House. Do I have that flow chart correct?

[00:00:57] Speaker 2: I think that's about an accurate assessment, John. And I just want to point to you that you to this very remarkable statement to our colleague Kristen Holmes from Stephen Miller yesterday. As you said, in the immediate aftermath of federal agents killing of Alex Pretty on Saturday, we heard Stephen Miller go to social media almost immediately. He referred to Pretty as, quote, a domestic terrorist, also a would be assassin. And you can believe that he was behind a lot of the messaging that was coming from this White House. But then last night, in the statement to our colleague Kristen Holmes, he says, quote, The White House had provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conductive to conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors. He goes on to say we are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol. He also says that some of the original statements that were coming from the Department of Homeland Security were, quote, based on reports from CBP on the ground. So clearly shifting blame there and notably not disputing that he was involved in those statements, but not apologizing for them either.

[00:02:13] Speaker 1: Correct, Betsy?

[00:02:15] Speaker 2: Absolutely right.

[00:02:17] Speaker 1: Okay. And that's important because he said those things. He's blaming now CBP for giving him the information that led to those statements, but he is not apologizing. Jeff, bigger picture here. When you take a step back, this is very unusual from this Trump administration or either any Trump administration for that matter. They have really conducted now about three retreats in the last week by my account. First on Greenland, first the idea of no military action, definitely going to own it now. Eh, maybe not so much. The president had to backtrack on saying NATO troops weren't on the front lines in Afghanistan and now clearly backing off a little bit in Minneapolis. That's a lot different than we've seen before from this administration, Jeff.

[00:02:59] Speaker 3: John, it absolutely is. It's not only unusual, it just hasn't happened, particularly on immigration. Look, this was intended to be a strength for President Trump. It always has been. It's one of the things that helped get him elected in the first place back in 2016 and certainly reelected in 2024. Now immigration is viewed by Republicans as a weakness for this administration. That explains the flow chart that you were pointing out earlier. Stephen Miller isn't doing this simply because he's suddenly had a change of heart. He's doing this because even a few Republicans, a growing, a small but growing number of Republicans are beginning to confront and challenge and question this administration. It is all coming, of course, as the very mission in Minnesota is being reviewed. And it's a funding review from ICE, of course. It could lead to a government shutdown at the end of the week, we shall see. But Stephen Miller knows the president is unhappy about this. That's why he is sort of backpedaling here. But the bigger picture, it's not just optics here. Is policy actually going to change? And that is very much unclear. One huge difference from this administration versus the first Trump administration, he's very reluctant to fire anyone. In the first administration, people were being fired all the time, week by week. That has not happened. So I do not expect any firings here. But this is a dramatic change of position here. And keep your eye on Stephen Miller. He's viewed as a liability in some circles here. He's very close to the president. I don't expect him to go anywhere. But that statement that Betsy was reading is extraordinary because we have never seen a retreat like that from him.

[00:04:35] Speaker 1: Yeah. And Betsy, just, you know, I'll hold up the flowchart once again, since Jeff just celebrated it here. Where's the president in this flowchart? Who exactly does the president blame among these three choices?

[00:04:48] Speaker 2: Well, I think the president's message here is that he's trying to deescalate. He is trying to, we've seen him even talk to Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey in the aftermath. And the president now is essentially saying that those calls are cordial and constructive. But when we ask if this is a substantive or a symbolic change, the White House is still actively blaming Democrats. We heard from Caroline Levitt saying that this is a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat officials, blaming the Pretty killing on Democrats. But the question is going to be, what is the change on the ground in Minneapolis here? And President Trump is appearing to indicate that there might be some more substantive changes. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

[00:05:38] Speaker 1: Yeah. Based on how Tom Homan has described the conversation with Tim Walz and the mayor there, and they both have described it, there is a bit of substantive difference there, merely in the dialogue. And very quickly, Jeff, while I still have you here, you know, Republicans on Capitol Hill, how far do you think they're willing to take their criticism?

[00:05:55] Speaker 3: Well, we will see. I mean, it's a growing number, but it's still a very small number of people. But I think the Senate Majority Leader John Thune was interesting yesterday. He called this an inflection point. So everyone is calling for an investigation and more oversight into ICE. Again, that is not something we saw after the Renee Goode shooting. So this is a different moment. There is no doubt about it. But again, to Betsy's point, will policies change on the ground? Again, what was a strength of the administration is now a political weakness.

[00:06:23] Speaker 1: A lot of fingers being pointed over the Trump administration's false claim that Alex Pretty, the man fatally shot in Minneapolis, was out to massacre federal agents, an accusation just not supported by the video we've all seen. Multiple sources suggested to Axios that the language came from the president's hardline advisor, Stephen Miller, with one source saying, quote, Miller gun and knew what the narrative would be. Pretty came to massacre cops. Miller, for his part, said, quote, Any early comments made were based on information sent to the White House through Customs and Border Protection. With us now is Mark Caputo, the senior politics reporter for Axios, who really broke this story yesterday. Mark, as always, I'm really excited to talk to you since you were out so far in front of this story. I put together a little flowchart based on your reporting here of who is being blamed and how inside the White House and inside the administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is blaming Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller appears to be blaming Customs and Border Protection. Do I have that correct?

[00:07:22] Speaker 4: I mean, generally, what I do know is that Noem is feeling the heat, obviously in Capitol Hill and elsewhere. And she's told people and I'm told she also told the president, look, everything I've said is because of what I've been told to say and do by the president and Stephen Miller. And as you pointed out, Miller is saying that statement that was released came because of on the ground reports from CBP. And specifically what you're hearing more people in the White House start to say is the bad guy in all of this, and I'm putting bad guy in air quotes, is Greg Bovino, who was the commander, the cowboy in the words of one person who was in charge of this, let's call a shambolic operation that resulted in the deaths of two people in the shooting of a total of three in a month.

[00:08:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, there are two separate things I think we should point out here that Miller now seems to be saying to you and others. Number one, that CBP, that the officers on the ground broke some kind of protocol, some kind of instructions they've been given by the White House about how they were supposed to behave, actually enforce the law. But also Miller is saying that he was told perhaps misleading stuff by CBP. Those are two things, but are those both directionally what Stephen Miller is saying now?

[00:08:38] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's correct. According to the White House, according to Miller, there is a protocol that they had developed where these teams, these squads that would go on these immigration raids or to execute these warrants or find, in their words, these criminal aliens, would be divided in two. One group would do crowd control to stop what they called the disruptors, and the other would go and do the arrests. And according to them, on this fateful day, on Saturday, that just sort of devolved into chaos and none of that took place. Obviously, in the background of this, there have been other videos, other cases of pretty egregious policing that had happened under Bovino. Specifically, there was the young man at Target, the Target worker who was pushing around grocery store carts, gotten some sort of jaw-boning incident with these agents. They tackled him, they kind of beat him, they shoved him in a van, and they dropped him off nearby. Stuff like that did start to really rankle at the president, and finally the president made his change on Monday.

[00:09:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, so based on your reporting, you know, if we have this chart of a blame game, you know, where does the president fit here? As far as you can tell, who is the president blaming for all this?

[00:09:46] Speaker 4: He's not really blaming anyone. It's just one of those sort of, hey, things sort of happen, and let's move on. One of the things the president doesn't want to do is communicate a weakness that he's backing off, and in that, under that umbrella is the idea that he needs to make a change. So let's just be very clear. Kristi Noem, from all of the information we're getting, and from all the observations that we've made collectively as the news media, and those of us who cover the White House specifically, Kristi Noem is staying, and so is Stephen Miller. His longest-serving political advisor trumps from Trump 1, architect of the immigration plan, a guy with encyclopedic knowledge of immigration law who really sort of represents a lot of the hard-line policies that Trump at heart really does enjoy.

[00:10:28] Speaker 1: And then just very quickly, any bit of reporting that you've done that indicates that Noem or Miller or anyone might apologize for the statements that they made just after this incident happened on Saturday?

[00:10:41] Speaker 4: I have gotten no indication of that. We've asked if, hey, do you want to issue at least some sort of correcting information, and so far the answer to that has been no.

[00:10:50] Speaker 1: Mark Caputo, as I said, great reporting on this. You were out in front with this yesterday. Really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.